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without the good will of the people, an army will be useless in any event;
They are wrong. Marcus Antonius has no fear of us or anyone.
the end that I discover at last is not the end that I conceived at first. For every solution entails new choices, and every choice made poses new problems to which solutions must be found, and so on and on.
the Senate gave its thanks to the assassins; and in the next breath approved and made law those very acts of Caesar for the proposal of which he had been killed.
he sorrowfully announced to the people that despite the will, Antonius would not release Caesar’s fortune to him, but that he (Octavius), having taken Caesar’s name, would fulfill Caesar’s obligations—that the bequest would be paid them out of his own pocket.
Antonius has mobilized the Macedonian legions and goes to meet them at Brindisi; Octavius is enlisting the discharged veterans of Caesar’s legions in Campania.
XV. The Acts of Caesar Augustus (A.D. 14) At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the Republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction.
Every success uncovers difficulties that we have not foreseen, and every victory enlarges the magnitude of our possible defeat.
Antonius lost heart; and gathering what remained of his troops, marched northward toward the Alps,
the Senate, which has formed a commission
the witticism that Cicero made: “We shall do the boy honor, we shall do him praise, and we shall do him in.”
that the appearance of tradition and order cloaked the reality of corruption and chaos;
We had learned that we had to do what we did, and we would not be deterred by the forms that deceived the world.
the Senate was now embarked upon the inevitable, though delayed, consequence of the assassination: the Caesareans had to be exterminated.
The cause was survival; survival depended upon alliance; and alliance depended upon our strength.
Octavius encamped his army outside the city upon the Esquiline hill, so that the people and the senators had but to raise their eyes to the east to know our strength. It was over in two days, and not a drop of Roman blood was spilled.
the adoption of Octavius by Julius Caesar was made into law;
Octavius came into Rome to perform the ritual sacrifice attendant upon his accession to the consulship. A month later he celebrated his twentieth birthday.
IX. Letter: Marcus Tullius Cicero to Octavius Caesar (August, 43 B.C.) You are quite right, my dear Caesar; my labors for the state deserve the reward of tranquillity and rest. I shall therefore quit Rome and retire to my beloved Tusculum
Marcus Antonius to Octavius Caesar,
Senatorial Trial: against the murderers and conspirators in the murder of Julius Caesar. Prosecutors: Lucius Cornificius and Marcus Agrippa.
Octavius, Antonius, and Lepidus were to form a triumvirate modeled upon that of Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius, and Crassus, made nearly twenty years before; this triumviral power was to last for five years.
the necessity of our combining forces so that we might conquer Brutus and Cassius in the east and thus punish the murderers of Julius Caesar
Seventeen of the richest and most powerful senators were to be at once condemned to death and their fortunes confiscated;
punish the murderers of Julius Caesar and rid Rome of the tyranny of an aristocracy.
Marcus Cicero, shortly before the arrival of the triumvirs, had left the city, rightly convinced that he could no more escape Antonius than Cassius and Brutus could escape Octavius Caesar:
One looks at maps, and does not truly apprehend the extent and variety of the world.
teachers (one does not call them philosophers in Rome, where philosophy is somewhat suspect)
They look at learning as if it were a means to an end;
deputations from both sides approached their respective leaders and demanded that Antonius and Octavius once more reconcile their differences, so that not again would Roman be pitted against Roman.
Octavia merely smiled at him and said: “If it must be done, my brother, it must be done; I shall try to be a good wife to Antonius and remain a good sister to you.”
your late uncle (or “father,” as you now may call him)—and
the twins with which Cleopatra has presented me; they may or may not be my own;
When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive—what does one become?
such power as only the great can imagine.
the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult.
he had caught the dream of the Greek Alexander,
we moved in strength to the Bay of Actium, where the largest enemy force was concentrated, hoping to lure there those who would prevent our pretended invasion, in which effort we succeeded.
We would force them to do battle upon sea, though their strength was upon the land.
we waited; for we knew that the armies of the East suffered from hunger and disease, and could not muster the strength for a retreat by land.
We were beyond the mouth of the bay, and spread thinly out in a curving line, so that we had no ships behind us.
We had not raised sail, and we could move swiftly about the heavier ships;
having hoisted sail, the enemy’s decks did not afford room for slingers and archers to work effectively; and the sails offered easy targets for the fireballs that we catapulted. Our own decks were clear so that when we grappled a ship, our soldiers in superior numbers could board the enemy and overcome him with some ease.
Though they opposed us, they were Roman soldiers; and we were sickened at the waste.
The vessel which carried Caesar Augustus and my own ship had come so close together that we could look into each other’s eyes and could even shout to be heard above the furor; not thirty yards away, where it had been pursued and then left, was the ship of Marcus Antonius. I believe that all three of us saw the purple sail of Cleopatra’s departing flagship at the same time. None of us moved; Antonius stood at the prow of his ship as if he were a carven figurehead, looking after his departing Queen. And then he turned to us, though whether he recognized either of us I do not know. His face was
...more
I did not see Marcus Antonius again.
Deserted by their leaders, the remaining ships surrendered;
Did Marcus Antonius plead for his life? Yes. It is a matter best forgotten.
The matter of Cleopatra:
The matter of Caesarion:
